Lessons of Japan

Joe Cassano’s Testimony: AIG CDS Worked Just Fine - Deal Journal - WSJ

That 132 billion dollar loss? Never happened.

Hubris unbounded.

Joe Cassano’s Testimony: AIG CDS Worked Just Fine - Deal Journal - WSJ

And the real story: assets minus liabilities.

Creative displays of data

UPDATED: Worst chart I've seen all day | Media Matters for America

PressThink: The Politico Opens the Kimono. And then Pretends it Never Happened.

PressThink: The Politico Opens the Kimono. And then Pretends it Never Happened.

The Value of Economic Experts Experts

There is a debate going on about the value of opinions of those experts trained in economics versus pundits and bloggers with little training.

TheMoneyIllusion � Why won’t those &$*%#@ bloggers go away?: "Perhaps the problem is really cultural – a lack of humility and a lack of respect (or popularity) for those who write with humility. I can tell you, having swam in both the law school and econ school rivers simultaneously, that the things people in each subject confidently believe about the other are truly frightening."


From Kling. 

And the refute with the best name.

The Third Depression

Are things really this bad?

Op-Ed Columnist - The Third Depression - NYTimes.com

The Runaway General

The Runaway General | Rolling Stone Politics

Something I have always wondered

BBC - Earth News - Why kangaroos evolved small arms and long legs

China's currency: It is not yet Saturday ergo it will never be Saturday | The Economist

China's currency: It is not yet Saturday ergo it will never be Saturday | The Economist

Responsibility for the Federal Budget Deficit

Active policies, not the recession, caused most of the deficit.

Responsibility for the Federal Budget Deficit | Angry Bear

U.S. Lawmakers Reach Accord on New Finance Rules - WSJ.com

Like the health care bill: messy, not perfect but confirms the importance of democratic control of the house and senate.

The major fault is not applying more stringent capitalization rules.

U.S. Lawmakers Reach Accord on New Finance Rules - WSJ.com

Against The Super-Asinine, The Gods Themselves Contend in Vain - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com

Against The Super-Asinine, The Gods Themselves Contend in Vain - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com

Financial Reform Fails

Financial reform failed because Obama fell sway to persuasions of Wall Street.

Dead On Arrival: Financial Reform Fails � The Baseline Scenario

Great quote from the comments:
 Evo Morales of Bolivia put it best: “Obama is trapped by capitalism and the structure of imperialism. There is little difference between Bush and Obama!”

Greenspan Says “Deficit Reduction A Priority” — Hence, You Know its Not | The Big Picture

Greenspan Says “Deficit Reduction A Priority” — Hence, You Know its Not | The Big Picture: "Greenspan is arguably the most incompetent economist of his generation,"

Marginal Revolution: China fact of the day

Marginal Revolution: China fact of the day: "China now exports every six hours as much as it did in the whole of 1978"

Karzai as ibn Saud

What exactly is the Army doing escorting American geologists around Afganistan? How many died for this project?

Karzai as ibn Saud | Talking Points Memo: "'a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists' has discovered vast mineral deposits in the country"

Apple Unveils iPhone 4

Even Jobs has trouble uploading sometimes.

Apple Unveils iPhone 4 - WSJ.com: "during Mr. Jobs's presentation. The CEO had difficulty getting Web pages to load, causing the crowd to go silent at one point."

Taxation: And now, a moment of populism | The Economist

The rich are different. They have attorneys to help them evade tax.

Taxation: And now, a moment of populism | The Economist

Rajiv Sethi: The New Market Makers

The need for more regulation of high frequency traders. What is allowed and what is market manipulation needs to be defined.

Rajiv Sethi: The New Market Makers

"latency arbitrage."

Not just faster, rigged.

Superfast Traders' New Edge - WSJ.com

Warren Buffett's Shameful Performance

The goggles are starting to come off.

Warren Buffett's Shameful Performance | Capital Gains and Games

The BP Oil Spill’s Lessons for Regulation

The BP Oil Spill’s Lessons for Regulation - Project Syndicate: "Economics teaches us that when there is huge uncertainty about catastrophic risks, it is dangerous to rely too much on the price mechanism to get incentives right. Unfortunately, economists know much less about how to adapt regulation over time to complex systems with constantly evolving risks, much less how to design regulatory resilient institutions. Until these problems are better understood, we may be doomed to a world of regulation that perpetually overshoots or undershoots its goals."

Do inefficient stock markets drive bad corporate governance? | vox - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

corporate governance in Japan. Subsidiary listing is bad for minority shareholders.

Do inefficient stock markets drive bad corporate governance? | vox - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

Sick of White Guys

Probably correlated with growth of the Tea Party

Intermarriage Slows Among Hispanics, Asians - WSJ.com

Why Assassination as a strategy does not work

Five or six number threes?

Al Qaeda's Third-in-Command Believed to Have Been Killed - WSJ.com: "'At least five or six previous al Qaeda 'No. 3s' have been killed and captured in the past eight years,' Mr. Hoffman said. 'It may be that we are finally depleting its hitherto deep bench of operatives. It is likely though, based on past experience, that a successor is already waiting in the wings.'"